Chemical War Prohibited, 1925

This is the integral text of the Protocol forbidding chemical and biological warfare. It was respected by all parties in World War Two:

Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare

Signed at Geneva: 17 June 1925. Entered into force: for each signatory as from the date of deposit of its ratification; accessions take effect on the date of the notification by the depositary Government. Depositary Government: France.

The Undersigned Plenipotentiaries, in the name of their respective Governments:

Whereas the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices, has been justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilized world;

and Whereas the prohibition of such use has been declared in Treaties to which the majority of Powers of the world are Parties; and To the end that this prohibition shall be universally accepted as a part of International Law, binding alike the conscience and the practice of nations;

Declare: That the High Contracting Parties, so far as they are not already Parties to Treaties prohibiting such use, accept this prohibition, agree to extend this prohibition to the use of bacteriological methods of warfare and agree to be bound as between themselves according to the terms of this declaration.

The High Contracting Parties will exert every effort to induce other States to accede to the present Protocol. Such accession will be notified to the Government of the French Republic, and by the latter to all signatory and acceding Powers, and will take effect on the date of the notification by the Government of the French Republic.

The present Protocol, of which the English and French texts are both authentic, shall be ratified as soon as possible. It shall bear to-day’s date.

The ratifications of the present Protocol shall be addressed to the Government of the French Republic, which will at once notify the deposit of such ratification to each of the signatory and acceding Powers.

The instruments of ratification of and accession to the present Protocol will remain deposited in the archives of the Government of the French Republic.

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To become party to the Protocol, states must deposit an instrument with the government of France (the depositary power). Thirty-eight states originally signed the Protocol. France, the first victim of a massive chemical attack, in 1915, was the first signatory to ratify the Protocol on 10 May 1926. As of May 2013, 138 states have ratified, acceded to, or succeeded to the Protocol (most recently Moldova on 4 November 2010).

The rest of the miscreants are bound by International Law, whether they like it, or not.

***

Even the Nazis respected the 1925 Geneva Protocol. The Nazis had thousands of tons of neurotoxic gas in 1945, and the means to deliver them: V2 rockets, and three types of jet bombers (democratic aircraft did not fly fast enough to catch them!)

The Nazis had also every reason to be resentful: goaded into the war by their erstwhile allies (see the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement), exasperated by American plutocracy bait and switch tactics, seeing their world collapse as the evidence of their cold assassination of more than twenty million civilians was all over their realm, one would have expected for all senior Nazis to emulate Magda Goebbels, who personally poisoned her six children.

Instead, cooler heads prevailed.

Cooler heads have to be encouraged.

***

In 1966 United Nations General Assembly resolution 2162B called for, without any dissent, all states to strictly observe the protocol. In 1969 United Nations General Assembly resolution 2603 (XXIV), to overrule the USA (then using Agent Orange in Vietnam!) declared that the prohibition on use of chemical and biological weapons, now forms part of customary international law.

So, let’s get personal, and indeed punish directly, individually, those who live in infamy!

Another reminder: very few high officers were responsible of imperial Japan’s fascist, war crime laden rampage that led to the vicious idiocy of Pearl Harbor, among other follies. (There had been an attempted anti-plutocratic coup by junior officers, February 26, 1936, against the higher-ups; many were killed, but the coup failed.)

Taking out a dozen of these fanatical high officers would have done wonders (and not enough of them were hanged after the war!)

Only one caveat in this Syrian story: the responsibility of Assad’s government ought to be demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt.

That NO chemical of fanatical Salafist rebels origin have been released has to be made certain; this is when the good old methods of the NSA and other spies, come into play; the information ought to be made public.

Another point: if Hitler had been executed, say in 1944, a fortiori 1939, there is no doubt that the total number of people saved may have been a huge proportion of those who died..

Thus, one has to strike the head of the snake. If one can show that orders to use chemicals were given by Assad, he should be considered, him, as a person, the number one target of any strike on Syria. Because he would be, by far, the most responsible. Do to him what should have been done to Hitler in a timely manner. That ought to encourage those of the same ilk.

Some worry that Syria would be lost without Mr. Assad and his spendthrift wife. Not to worry: I am sure plenty of unsullied secular high officers can be found in the Syrian army to replace him.

32 Responses to “Chemical War Prohibited, 1925”

I was 100% against the attack against S. Hussein and the bomb bomb bomb of Sen. Mc Cain against Iran.

Iran is a hard case: the Shah’s terrible regime was replaced an arguably even worse plutocracy! But what to do?

Syria is a completely different case: here we are talking of specific case of a crime against humanity. And not with the sort of excuse that Saddam had of a war against Iran when he gased 5,000 motly innocent civilian Kurds!
PA

You are SURE it was Assad that used chem weapons? he has ZERO reason to use them, he is winning his war against the US western sponsored rebels why would he endanger that?It makes no sense at all to do so.

Hello Ken, and welcome to the comments. I admit it looks impossible that Assad would allow the UN inspectors in, and exploit the occasion to use chemicals in a mass murder.

As you say, it makes no sense. Yet, it’s precisely because it makes no sense to the common person that it made sense to Assad to hide behind that incredulity, as I explained in “Peace From War”.

Assad was not born yesterday, he has studied stuff. He is a Medical doctor, and became dictator directly only because his elder brother died…

All the more as the Western leaders were stuck in their orgasm of Islamophilia, exhibiting, for all to see, their love of the Muslim Brotherhood/Al Qaeda in total contradiction of all what they are supposed to stand for.

Assad has been unable to conquer the south of Damascus, a rather embarrassing situation for someone who is depicted as “winning his war against the US sponsored rebels”. So he fires his neurotoxin Sarin rockets, and, presto, 4,000 dead among those he hates!

BTW, the rebels were not US sponsored to start with, but, even earlier, France sponsored (France sent “administrative” and humanitarian aid, early on, and recognized the opposition council first), and, before that it’s Assad himself that sponsored his own Salafist lethal enemies!

So, as you can see I found THREE reasons already for him to act the way he did.

Assad is a plutocrrat in full. He could give lessons to Machiavel. When confronted to pacific secular opponents asking him to leave power, he released thousands of the most dangerous Salafists from his jails, in the hope they would change the debate to Jihad. And that’s exactly what happened.

This is also why, when, as I said, precise responsibilities have been established, when who in the chain of comman gave the order, those people ought to be EXECUTED ASAP. At least target them with cruise missiles, and the like. France has extremely fast hypersonic cruise missiles carried by Rafale supersonic bombers that could achieve the effect of surprise USA subsonic Tomahawk cannot achieve. (Putin had eliminated a persistent Chechen chief that way, using a small missile aimed at his phone!)

BTW, Obama said nothing different last night. And I am a scientist in my soul, I need proof. But that the rebels in the south of Damas would self gas 3,650 of themselves to death, just so that Assad’s palace can be hit by a couple of Tomahawks, is much more implausible than the alternative.
PA.

Was there a red line on chemical weapons when the US used depleted-uranium ammunition in Fallujah, Iraq? Was there a red line when Israel deployed white phosphorous in Gaza in 2008? Or when Saddam Hussein, then a western ally, gassed the Iranians and then his own people during the 1980s?

Dear Ken: Sure, there were plenty of red lines. Saddam and his top aides (“Chemical Ali”, etc.) were hanged for the gasing in Kurdistan.
You don’t see Israel using phosphorus these days. French displeasure was accute, and expressed loudly. And Israel depends heavily upon the EU, not just to sell oranges.
I think the assault against Fallujah was, by itself, a war crime (just because 4 professional killers from the USA had been roasted as deserved!).
USA strategy was later turned on its head in Iraq, thanks to that general nobody talks about anymore, and a despondent Bush meekly following…

Red lines have to be regularly repainted in blood. That’s why they are red.
PA

http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/video-shows-rebels-launching-gas-attack-in-syria/ there is video of FSA rebels using chem weapons.More importantly do we have a RIGHT to interfere at all?Maybe it would be best if we kept out of it and cut aid to the rebels and to the Egyptian military and to Israel let the region reorganize as it’s people need to do to find peace then deal honestly with the new leaders.We are not the protectors of all of humanity we are 5% of the population trying to inflict our capitalist systems on the rest of the world, can’t say democratic because Obama is virtually a dictator. Congress is supposed to have the power to declare war not the President alone. We have lost our democracy and that should be more important than yet another war by a Noble Peace prize winner who has a Tuesday tick off for drone attacks on “Suspected” terrorists.We have no moral high ground with that type of behavior.

The only reason there was no massive nuclear war yet, has been the military control of the planet by the USA, France, the UK, supported by their supine allies. Maybe sad and pathetic, but the truth. Relax that, get the apocalypse.
PA

Are we to understand that French or West-European imperial adventures are good, as in moral, and the US wrong?

I also remember that the West abused the international community mandate in Libya.

Here’s the thing: If the West needs such adventures to cover for lack of viable alternatives to cancerous capitalism is something we can debate on, but presenting such adventures as moral imperatives on a blog with such intellectual altitude is something else.

Dear Via fCh: Thanks for the interesting comment and link. Yesterday the new York Times censored no less than 3 of my comments about Syria… While claiming that anti-war comments were approved by hundreds, within minutes. If such is the case, one would have to conclude Auschwitz was not enough of a lesson… Maybe the USA ought to have the 4 million killed in 30 years, as the French Republic (and its empire) had between 1914 and 1945. 30 million Americans going boom in the night would help find out war is serious business, best done by philosophers…

I could write a 1,000 page book about Saddam and company. Remember the picture of Rumsfeld shaking Saddam’s hand? French pilots apparently even carried out some difficult mission against Iran (it is said). There is no doubt the Western powers aided and abetted Saddam against Iran. He was idiotic enough to fall into it. Also the Western ones underestimated the popular support of the Salafist regime there (I deliberately insult them here by calling them Salafists, when they are Shia…)

The French republic did not abuse the mandate in Lybia anymore than it usually does. For example in Bosnia, having a mandate to protect the population, France found it had to take out Serbian guns. And so it did.

Many times France has intervened, and got a UN mandate later. She did this several times in Africa.

Once France had a mandate to protect the population in Libya, everybody knew that it meant total war. France had warred with Qaddafi for decades and nearly killed him once in Chad in a supersonic bombing raid with special parachute bombs.

There are several essays of mine about Lybia, on this site. I was the first to call for the destruction of Qaddafi (BHL followed months later). Obama did exactly what I recommended. France would have gone to war alone anyway. She started the bombings alone, and did help in the capture of Tripoli, with an airlift of heavy weapons in the mountains south of Tripoli, and a sly assault with Marsoins.

Make a note that I am the first calling for the execution of Assad by missiles. Should his order of using Sarin be proven without a doubt. (See Dominique’s comment.)

Executing underlings is unethical, inefficient, anti-Republican.

I say: strike hard, strike to kill. But there is time to get the UN aligned.

Why? Hitler. WWII. Auschwitz. we have seen enough. Strike early, and democracy will be back for dinner in a timeley manner! ;-)!

It’s important that murderers such as Assad understand they can be executed by the Republic. (BTW, did you follow the allegation that the dictator of North Korea would have assassinated his old mistress, a famous singer, and her husband?)
PA

1) For the rest of the world, Assad is no Hitler, for Syria is no Germany.
2) In the past 10 years, the analogy to Hitler/Germany in the context of appeasement has worn out. You know, crying wolf once too many times…
3) The world doesn’t look any better after imperial intervention in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, etc.
4) The position of the French military was very realistic in former Yugoslavia. Even the British one was remarkable when general Michael Jackson rebutted our own, the once presidential candidate turned lobbyist for mineral interests in the same very area of concern, Wesley Clark.
5) After 12 years of fighting ‘terrorism’ against ourselves in airports and lifestyle (see the ongoing airport circus, interrogation techniques, drones against US citizens, spying at home, etc.), it’s high time we reconsidered the costs and benefits of manufacturing threats.
6) In fact, Russia may soon become the interwar Germany, an idea of mine I break it here to your readers before mine…

The fact that the UK, France and even Germany raise their voices against Syria is indeed indication for something more serious, but only time can tell what’s what.

Mme Carla del Ponte, an instrumental friend of the West, is reported to have stated that so far the INCOMPLETE evidence points out to the rebels in Syria as perpetrators of the atrocities attributed to Assad. After Messrs. Tenet & Powell made fools of themselves at the UN, I have to take whatever secret services reports with a mountain of salt.

As far as manufacturing threats, that’s what Assad did. More generally, the USA manufactured the war in Afghnaistan (in 1979!), and then Al Qaeda (ooppsss!). This has been exposed in countless essays of mine over more than 10 years.

The USA even helped manufacture Islamism, starting on the Quincy in 1945… Or Nazism, in the 1920s and 1930s. So it’s a bit amusing to teach me that way: I am the professor of atrocious criminal cynicism here…
PA

BTW, French public opinion is 59% against intervening in Syria, USA public opinion, 60% AGAINST. And in the UK the public opinion is 69% against too.

If we have the proof that Assad ordered the gasing, he should surrender, or be executed.
But if we do not have enough proof, he should be warned that he will be personally targetted, should he do it again (OK, apparently he did 14 times already, but never on that scale).

“The voice of dialogue and negotiation is the only way” said Pope Francis… Nice, especially coming from a Pope, with the long humanistic tradition of the institution he leads, ha ha ha.
PA

Oh Via fCh, I forgot to answer your last remark, as I felt it was in jest initially. Excellent. According to that point of view the French Republic was wrong and hiding “cancerous capitalism”, when it declared war to Adolf Hitler, on September 3, 1939?

Should France have done like the USA and collaborate with Hitler?

Should have France have done like IBM, a USA corporation that was never sued as it belongs to the master race (?), and help gas twenty millions? (Or so.)

Notice cowardice did not allow the USA to avoid the war, as Hitler declared war TO the USA, December 11, 1941… But these are years that shall live in infamy.

My moral imperative is in full contradiction with, and better, than Kant’s. Limit collateral damage. Assad is a full blown plutocrat, I just propose to eliminate him IF he ordered the gasing (although reasonable certainty, as with Hitler, will do!). What could go wrong? ;-)!

Yes, I am not naive like Voltaire… Or even Sade (both of whom took dramatic stances on this subject, and HUGELY inflected history; something nobody but me seems to have noticed… In the case of Voltaire, it was a disaster for French civilization… And why I am writing in English.)
PA

About the doubts being aired re the origin and authors of the (undoubted) mass neurotoxic gas use in Damas.

Le Canard Enchaîné (which is an information paper first and foremost, despite its satirical tone) reports in its current issue that

“François Hollande’s unequivocal fingering of Assad’s military after the chemical bombing of Aug. 21 comes from reading a report from French intelligence. The report states that four Russian-made Grad BM-21 missiles were used, after their warheads had been suitably “filled”. This “filling” procedure is both compulsory and very difficult, and it would seem that some of Bashar’s military also breathed this Sarin cocktail.”

Thanks, Dominique, for that information, excellent! (So to speak!) I don’t have the time to read the Canard, most of the time…The French intelligence in much of Africa, and the Middle East has got to be much superior to the American one.

I maintain that the way to handle this, if confirmed, is to put some sort of “Wanted Dead or Alive” notice on Assad, with a formal call that he presents himself to the International Court of Justice. Immediately after that, Western strikes ought to target him personally. Rafale carried “SCALP” missiles could do wonders.
PA

(Grad BM-21 is the current version of the WWII Katyusha, Stalin’s Organs. With 275 launchers (each firing 40 missiles) Syria holds one of the largest inventories of this system. It seems that Malian Salafist insurgents had filched a few from Gaddafi’s arsenal, three of which were found (abandoned) by French forces in Mali. How a system which needs a 6×6 truck for transport and operation could be brought to bear clandestinely in Damas, and the complex Sarin filling procedures followed by Salafists, would seem to stretch the imagination.)

About your: “3)The world doesn’t look any better after imperial intervention in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, etc.”

Quite the opposite. First red lines were painted all over, making even the Russian and Chinese military think. China knows very well that, should it attack Taiwan or the Philipines, NATO would react. Even about Tibet, threading lightly is best. So they think of peace instead.
Ibidem Russia with Ukraine and Georgia.

Now, if you said this in Kosovo, you may be lynched. Same in Bosnia, or Libya. There is actually a massive oil strike in Libya, and nobody talks about it, excpet oil traders, because there was not one single casualty. Also the Berbers, to whom the french republic established a military airlift in the last threefour months of the war, have earned the right to teach their 3,300 years old alphabet…

Enough with the war criminals in Bush cabinet. They ought to have been tried. Thier “evidence” against Saddam was both manufactured and idiotic. It was obvious at the time. See what Dominique wrote.

Assad himself is a notoriously irrate murderer. He kills on a whim. That’s how he killed Hariri.

I doubt Carla del Ponte is idiotic enough to claim the rebels self mass murdered themselves so that 40 American and French missiles fall on deserted airfields.
(That’s why I suggest to eliminate Assad himself.)
PA

Would you call the situation in Bosnia or Kosovo better? Better than what? I think, the baseline ought to be at least Yugoslavia before 1990.

Scores of peace keepers and a dysfunctional economy, wanna-be-state like artificial entities on life support. Also, if you have a chance, ask former Yugoslav refugees (not only Serbs) and chances are you’ll be told they regret the madness they were helped to get into.

Libya will remain a failed state for a while, and the only way out is gonna be another strong man, or few of them–if the West has its way, in the image of pre-1979 Iran otherwise post-1979.

If Assad could be ‘surgically’ taken out, I see little to no harm. I doubt that those surrounding him haven’t learned the lessons from the recent history. So, I expect they’ll join Assad in opposing intervention at costs to us we never bother to explicitly consider, lest the public withdraws entirely its support.

Dear Via fCh: The base line in Bosnia was NOT the revolt, and war of independence of Slovenia. It’s no because prex FDR gave Slaovenia to Uncle joe that it was written in stone. FDR was after disintegrating Europe, starting in 1934 with his hatred of France, his work is in shatters.

Slovenia fought a war with the Yougoslav army, and won. Go explain to the Slovenes, who were/are basically Austrians (and now long part of the EU), that their Alpine Republic should be submitted to Moscow addicted Serb invaders (Heraclius allowed the Slavs to settle in Serbia, but not slovenia, in the 7C; actually Slovenia was in the Occidental Part, under Frankish control, and became part of the Carolingina empire, soon after.)

In the following years, Yougoslavia disintegrated in a ferocious war between Croatia and Serbia. then the Bosnian Serbs got the fancy idea to eliminate all Croats and Muslims from there. The Croats turned out hard to chew, so the Bosnian Serb leaders, now on trial, decided to do in the Muslims, that means, kill them all.

That’s when Britain and France were mandated by the UN to interpose themselves, to spare the population. But Serb long range artillery kept on puonding the million plus Muslims living in Sarajevo. The French Republic, after giving many warnings to the Serbian army, finally decided exceed the UN mandate and to take out Serbian artillery with counter-strikes.
***Libya is NOT disfunctional. Elections happened, the first elections EVER, and the Islamists did NOT win. Libya is a huge country, with a vast history and culture of non Arab origin. Right now Touareg-Berber, Punic, Greek, and Roman inheritance are resurfacing strongly. It’s messy, but necessary in the effort to throw out Salafist Islam.
PA

Thanks Via fCh! Very interesting. I saved the doc under “Syria? Gas. Israel, idiocy.” That article conflates different notions, some of them outrageous. It would require twice as long an article to dismantle that student’s attempt at messing up all logics. For example the accord with Turkey is presented as a sinister plot to make a coalition with Turkey. But the truth is the other way: Turkey occupies part of Cyprus, and thus required to get some gas too.

There are fake leftist outlets out there, like the Daily Kos (which was set-up by the CIA!) The idea is to channel well meaning humanitarian/leftist types towards ideas so idiotic that they cannot affect the established order.

To present the fall of Qaddafi, a torturer and assassin who had a deal with Bush-Cheney as a sinister coup of the West is beyond the pale. Qaddafi, a personal torturer of little girls, deserved to be executed, he was, amen. His son Saif Al Islam lost part of two fingers, but is still in detention in the mountains south of Tripoli. It has to do with the resuscitation of Berber-Touareg culture, and their alphabet, not gas off Israel.

I personally started the anti-Qaddafi campaign well before anyone else (some people of influence read me). And I am certainly not paid by plutocrats.

The problem in Syria is Islam. Salafist Islam is a war religion who says to obey one’s superior as if he were god, and kill unbelievers, especially if they used to be Muslims. You can read my more than 10,000 words (mostly direct quotes of the Qur’an) essay as a first approach to the subject:https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/some-violence-in-holy-quran/

I spent my childhood and youth mostly in two places with two variants of Sufi Islam (which I approve of, and has nothing to do with Salafism and Wahhabism to which I am deeply antagonistic).

Screaming against French colonialism, especially when the French are treated as badly as they are in the USA (they used to claim they were Jews, to be treated less badly), is just another way to support the ugliest face of American imperialism. The French did a huge amount of good in Africa and the Middle east, including Lebanon and Syria. And freed Lybia (Qaddafi extracted much more oil, BTW, for western oilocrats).

Many support Assad because they view him as anti-Salafist, anti-Wahhabist. But he manipulated them.
PA

Patrice, the only detail I was pointing out was the gas finding in an area disputed by Syria and its neighbors. All other associations belong solely to their authors. The only association I am making is between gas and war–now, bear in mind, the gas therein would also be a leverage at decreasing Putin’s hold on the EU gas market and not only…
So, careful with waking up that bad bear of a revanchist Russia!

That little pseudo-leftist student pulled a fast one by omitting the little detail that Syria has nothing to do with the offshore gas. The whole article is written under the premise that it does. I was happy, though, to learn, among other things, that prez Clinton, the world’s most famous prostitute, had found another way to beg for gold. So I am happy I read the article.

Russia can be all revanchist it wants. In recent years it was losing as much people each year, half a million, as France was gaining (that was before Sarkozy’s xenophobic policies, now repulsed!) Also Czar Putin barks strong, but he buys his aircraft carriers… in France.

As long as the mind will be repressed in Russia, its only long range hope is to surrender to the EU.
PA

Patrice, I guess we both start from different perspectives on Russia and its capabilities–I take everything else to be mere rhetorical devices as in, for example, Syria has no formal claim on the gas, as if its influence on Lebanon were nonexistent.

Russia can still inflict a lot of damage, both direct and asymmetrical. So much so that another cold war would be the best outcome of all potential disasters.

In closing, I think Obama was very clever to send his influencers to the Congress…